Random thoughts and blurbs from the founder for Shugo – Rick Hymanson. Who's Boda? It's a word my 7 year old made up when he was 2.

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Who’s Rob?

I thought it would be fun to give a brief description of Rob — who I’m sure many of you have talked to or emailed back and forth with. Rob’s the tech guru, the true genius, behind Shugo. Seriously, he’s up to any challenge we throw his way and far exceeds expectations.

Let me share an example. Over a year ago it was Friday at 4 pm and we were winding down a work week. For some reason ideas come to me at the worst time, like Friday at 4 pm (or 2:30 AM when I wake up in the middle of the night). I burst into Rob’s office with the challenge, “Rob, do you think we could find a way to automatically convert this type of encrypted file into PDF format?”. Rob looked at me in his usual, calm demeanor and agreed to take a look at it.

Now I expected maybe a week or two later to hear back from Rob on this progress. Besides, he had too much on his plate already to even look at this for a bit. Boy was I wrong — on Saturday afternoon, less than 24 hours after I asked the question, Rob emailed me the PDF version of the file. Of course he let me know it was actually “easy”. Right, easy for Rob = impossible for everyone else.

I personally met Rob years ago when I was a full time employee at another company. We were looking to add developer talent to the team and Rob was it. Though green at the time (who’s kidding, I was green too), Rob blew us away during the interview process that we had to bring him on board asap. You could tell after speaking with him for a few minutes his high level of intelligence and attention to detail.

When I started Shugo, I knew I needed the best of the best to make us a success. I started out with a different business partner. Quickly, I realized it just wasn’t a great fit. If I was going to push and push and push, I needed the absolute best. I knew I needed to convince Rob to join me and subsequently split from my original partner. Luckily, it didn’t take too much convincing or maybe it was just the continual flow of Guinness we both drank but Rob joined right away.

To date we’ve been a pretty good team — I’m the idea generator and Rob’s the execution “engine”. I think any successful team has to have both parts and each needs to realize the value of the other side. For me it’s perfectly clear, we couldn’t be where we are today with Rob.

Things Rob likes:

Pretzels – with spicy mustard

Guinness — and most beer in general

His iPhone

Hockey — we’re both Flyers fans

The Beatles — he’s a HUGE Beatles fan

Roast Beef sandwich with spicy mustard — Rob’s standard lunch

International (unique) cuisines

His giant home projector — uses it to project TV shows, movies and sporting events

Have a story about Rob? Share it — I’m sure others would love to hear.